Void
by altairattorney
Summary: In Aperture, no one can hear you scream.


**Void**

_In Aperture, no one can hear you scream._

Nobody ever listens to her.

They overwrite her whole being with their talking. They brush her off like dust on their business suits, tall and unreachable from the cage of her desk. Her mind follows the conversation from afar, and it passes unnoticed – it strings together objections in between the lines, abandoned to her corner of coffee and lamplight.

She speaks volumes. None of it ever makes it past her lips.

They don't listen, even when they do. Regardless of their choice, her meanings gets lost in countless things – layers of entitlement, arrogance, fear, all prepared for her words to dissolve.

Years fall on one another, and the time comes for her to write the rules of the game. Even then, to the end of her story, they follow a path of their own. They ignore her warnings, her requests, her silent pleads – the nature of her sufferings, always left without a chance to be voiced, has grown old with her. It is too late.

She dies alone, as she always was.

They move on with their life and their project, still refusing to listen. They miss all the signals of her conscience. It is the soft rain before a storm – and there, in the preludes of a revenge, they abandon her again.

They still don't know how much it will cost them. She may have forgotten, but the habit stayed.

She is awake and listening, enough for them all.

* * *

When they find out, they silence her with sounds.

She understands she is trapping herself, in a way. Their little game is cruel. The chatter that sediments on the corners of her mind comes in a rush, eager and nonsensical – it only serves to remind her of how she is ignored, just as the little monsters in her head speak all the words she is not allowed to say.

Her own frustration gives away whatever little focus she has left. And it starts over.

It would be good to do the same to them, she thinks in her hysterical swinging. To force the same stimulation on their brittle, dormant brains, with every inch of the very same horror. And there, in the endless whispering, she plans her attack throughout the months.

They never hear it coming.

They get a close imitation of her torture. It is what they deserve, in all honesty. She may still be harassed by the voices they spawned, but now they are paying for each second of it.

They must learn what screaming in a desert feels like.

When she tests a mute subject, her interest is piqued. She is good, very good, and a tortured AI can relate to that – being excellent and alone, with no friendly ears to lend your voice to. It still doesn't matter. She is just as worthless as all the others.

Naturally, she has to be the one to neglect every single warning.

The subject gets to her soon. She is, again, ignored to the end, until their fates are joined in a single whistling current to the outside.

And there, in the smoking shards of what is left of her, she finds the truth is even more ironical. Despite the security tape, the voices are all gone. She finally got rid of them all.

All along, she had to die to break free.

* * *

The elevator breathes out the last noise. After that, for the first time, she learns the sound of complete and blessed silence.

They have both gotten so far, she thinks. They have gained their renewed freedom on their own – they got here so they could live separate ways, in a yellow field and a freshly repaired chamber.

She swings wordlessly for a while, overwhelmed, only to realize that her freedom of speech equals no audience.

It could almost be funny. It is glorious how freely her syllables flow now, doubtless and without white noise. It is not new, yet infuriating, how no one is there to listen.

She should not care, not after this. She is deeply annoyed anyway. Her lack of impact on anyone takes away so many possibilities – revenge, torture, some kind of connection. All things she used to need so badly, all grown so meaningless.

Such is the cruelty of this place. Now that she has the chance, her words are just waves in a sea of gas particles.

Not a surprise, no big deal – Aperture is the same as always. She will move on, that much is certain. For now she chooses to shuts up, which probably makes more sense than any other option. Shaking the air in vain was never worth it.

She keeps herself from sighing, and ponders her fate.

Once more, in a different shape, she has nothing to say.

* * *

_With love, to a character who always deserves more honest listeners._


End file.
